Chapter Text
The air was thick with the scent of burning metal and the acrid sting of ionized dust. Colet’s breath came in short, ragged gasps as she pressed her back against the crumbling remains of a Martian outpost. Her rifle, slick with blood—some hers, some not—felt like dead weight in her hands.
The battlefield had gone eerily silent, the kind of quiet that meant something worse was coming. The ground beneath her trembled as distant artillery rounds struck the surface, sending plumes of red dust into the already tainted sky. The wreckage of human and Martian ships burned in the distance, their skeletal remains jutting out like the ribs of a dying beast.
She could still hear the distant hum of gunfire, muffled by the thick Martian air. But here, in this shattered ruin, there was nothing but the rasp of her own breathing. Colet adjusted her grip on her weapon, her muscles aching from the relentless fighting. The battle had raged for hours—maybe days? Time felt warped in the endless cycle of bloodshed and exhaustion. She wasn’t sure how many of her squadmates were still alive.
She had been separated when their unit breached this sector of the Martian defenses. It was supposed to be a turning point, a decisive push toward securing their foothold. This is something her squad planned and prepared for a long time. But something had gone wrong--
The Martians, had been ready, and the ambush had scattered them like dust in a solar storm.
Now, she was alone.
Colet exhaled sharply, its time to figure this out. Where does she start?
She pressed her hand against her side. She felt deadly pain regretting the press was too hard. She realize the sticky part was blood. Hers.
The wound was bad but not fatal. Not yet.
She let out a deep breathe. The thick fabric of her uniform was soaked in the mixture of sweat-blood-other things she crossed through the previous day, and it is sticking uncomfortably to her skin.
"you need to live." She mumbled to herself. "think."
She needed a med-patch, but her supply was gone. She clenched her teeth, pushing through the pain.Then----------- silent slow footsteps.
Her breath hitched. The sound is light, deliberate. Careful. Weak? Not the frantic stomping of human boots. Colet moved on instinct, raising her rifle and snapping it toward the sound.
The figure that emerged from the dust wasn’t human or her kind. She stood just a few feet away, motionless in the crimson haze. Now that she stared at it long enough, she knows, it is a female. You'll know it by the skin color. It was pale—not white, not gray, you can see green but not realy, something in between, like the light of a waning moon. The dark, angular lines of her uniform blended into the shadows. Blood also stained her thigh, trickling down in sluggish rivulets
--------- A Martian.
Her chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven breaths. Her stance was wary, her muscles coiled. But she hadn’t drawn her weapon.
Not yet.
Colet’s grip on her rifle tightened. her finger hovered over the trigger.
It would be so easy.
One shot.
One movement.
That was all it would take. But......
But then she saw her eyes. It is the first time she encounter one this close.
The eyes, they weren’t the empty, soulless voids she had been trained to expect. No sign of cruelty and madness. Not hostile but lifeless. They were dark and sharp, reflecting the flickering fires around them.
And in them, she saw something familiar-------
Exhaustion.
Fear.
Sadness.
The same bitter knowing that had settled deep into her own bones.
For a moment Colet couldn't moved. Something in her heart is breaking.
She exhaled shakily. Then, in perfect Earth-standard speech, she said,
“If you don’t shoot me, I won’t shoot you.”
Colet’s breath caught. Her mind screamed at her to fire, to uncomplicate it and finish the enemy. There will be no problem. Afterall, she's done it a hundred times. It was the enemy. It was the reason her squad was dead, the reason humanity was fighting for its survival on this godforsaken planet.
And yet, she hesitated. The first time she actually did.
The war outside raged on, but inside this broken ruin, a different kind of battle had just begun.